This shouldn’t come as any kind of surprise, but it’s a fact that anyone who works at MAD doesn’t have much of a life. Which means that even on a day off, we still manage to think about MAD! But sometimes that’s a good thing.

The cover of MAD # 411, which went on sale shortly after the 9-11 attack, was not the cover originally planned for that issue. In fact, another cover was already printed and awaiting to be bound with the magazine’s interior pages when the attack occurred. The working title of the planned cover was “The New York City Marathon” and it was written and illustrated by longtime MAD contributor John Caldwell. Here it is: